A councillor is using the oil price slump as rationale to demand the city freeze its public art program and spend the money on projects rather than beautification.
Coun. Peter Demong’s proposal to council will likely prompt the most fevered council debate since last month’s session on alcohol use. Several councillors already contend this idea has more to do with politics than fiscal policy.
“The public art of grandstanding — maybe that’s the kind of public art that some members actually understand and support and want to participate in,” said Brian Pincott, who called it an “assault” on the art program.
Demong, a longtime critic of the policy that devotes one per cent of major infrastructure budgets to art, wants planned public art funding suspended this year and for any unused portions to be diverted to other projects — a request that could strip millions of dollars from long-discussed art projects for the west LRT, and leave other infrastructure pieces citywide similarly unadorned.
This comes a month before city hall learns what sort of infrastructure grant cuts the provincial budget will bring to cope with the resource royalty. It’s naive to think there won’t be cuts, Demong said.
“To me, this is just sound financial management,” he said.
“If you don’t know what you’re getting in your next paycheque, you’d better be careful what you’re spending your current paycheque on.”
The Blue Ring public art project on the 96th Avenue connection to Airport Trail was photographed on October 8, 2013.
The savings generated by his idea would amount to around $5 million for this year’s art projects, plus whatever is left over and not yet committed in previous years’ arts accounts.
That could pay for unfunded fire hall upgrades or dozens of new safety lights at crosswalks, said the councillor for Calgary’s deep south.
But it’s a puny amount in the city’s $1.8-billion annual projects budget.
“Let’s look at the other 99 per cent of public projects,” said Coun. Evan Woolley. Before politics, he worked for the city’s public art program.
“What kind of tech company, when we’re trying to diversify our economy, will want to come to an ugly city?”
Public art has for years drawn controversy among council conservatives and city hall critics. Projects like the giant blue ring on 96th Avenue N.E. get pilloried as wasteful, though several smaller projects have drawn appreciation like some LRT beautification efforts and a Bow River celebration project in 2010.
Last year, Demong successfully fought to cap the amount of public art funding for large projects to $4 million, even if that’s less than the one-per-cent art component the decade-old policy asks to be set aside.
The member’s new motion would ask the city not to cancel any existing art commissions or projects, but kill the art commitment for projects where the process is in earlier stages. Those criteria would appear to spell trouble for the city’s $3-million pledged fund for art along the west LRT line, for which the city has launched public consultations about but hasn’t yet hired artists.
Demong also proposes the spending freeze be reconsidered in early 2016, and the art board that chooses projects be suspended until at least then.
“I can understand where he’s coming from,” said Jim Stevenson, a northeast councillor. He said he has questions about this policy’s impacts before he can support it.
Druh Farrell, one of council’s earliest champions of the One Per Cent for Public Art initiative, said she questions Demong’s stated motivations.
“I fail to see how this is linked to the economic downtown with such a small sum,” she said.
Tensions have been high among councillors since last month, when many were inflamed by Farrell complaining of “wild parties” with boozing colleagues, and Mayor Naheed Nenshi’s mentioning rumours that some councillors had been “blotto” at public events.
